Prologue

Pecos River, Texas

1878

“Sheriff Wilder! Sheriff Wilder!”

The loud, commanding knock came at the cabin door just as John settled his long, lanky body into the creaky rocking chair beside the fireplace.

I’m not the sheriff.

“Drat it all!” he muttered, annoyed at the interruption. Fingers stiff, he gripped the worn arms of the chair to push himself up. All day long, he’d been cleaning brush from along the corral fence. A short time earlier, he’d figured to rest a spell before starting evening chores.

Whoever it was, they’d shot down his peaceful evening.

“Who is it?” he hollered, as he shoved his stockinged feet back into mud-caked boots and headed for the door.

A young voice called out, a voice he recognized. “It’s Ethan, Sheriff.”

“And Lily,” a sweet, feminine voice spoke up.

Sam’s kids!

“Why didn’t you say so?”

He strode across the room, limping a little with his game leg, and pulled open the stout wooden door. “Come in, come in. Where’s your old pa? He come along too?”

Ethan shook his head, a wary glance at Lily, his brown eyes hiding something. “No, that’s what we need to talk to you about.”

John held the door and motioned the kids inside, although, come to think of it, they were no longer young. Ethan must be at least nineteen now. Lily, that cute little pigtailed girl just a few minutes ago, had to be sixteen; almost a woman.

“This is a surprise. Thought you all would be busy on your ranch with the spring chores and all. I keep meanin’ to get over there and visit but…”

A slight hiccup from Lily gave John the first indication that all wasn’t right. When he looked at her closely, John saw the girl had been crying for a long time. Her brown eyes were red rimmed, her nose pink from wiping, and a limp handkerchief was crumpled in her tight fist.

“Sit down and I’ll get some coffee, if you want a cup. Or there’s fresh milk. Bossie’s still giving plenty these days.” He gave Lily a wink, “might even round up a few cookies. You always were partial to my oatmeal raisin cookies, Lily. Baked a batch a couple of nights ago.”

Lily gave him a slight smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Shook her head no.

“No, thank you, Sheriff,” Ethan said, “we came to talk to you about…”

John lifted the coffee pot from the pot-bellied stove and poured himself a tin cup. “Been a long time since I was sheriff, Ethan. Me and your pa, finest deputy I ever had, did right proud for the town. Now, that’s all in the past.”

For years he’d tried to get Sam’s kids to stop calling him sheriff, but maybe some names got to be a habit.

“Maybe it’s time you went back to being a lawman,” Ethan said, still standing beside the table, his hands clenched at his sides. “Maybe you could…” his voice broke, and the young man came as close to tears as John had ever seen him.

A shudder passed through his body. A feeling Ethan was going to tell him something he didn’t want to hear. “Why don’t you tell me what’s in your craw, boy.”

“Pa’s dead.”

Dead? Sam?

It wasn’t possible. The words felt like a punch in the gut. John couldn’t form words. He swallowed hard, moistened his lips and managed to ask. “How? He was younger than me. Was it an accident?”

Lily didn’t try to hide her grief. Tears cascaded down her soft pink, baby cheeks, and sobs shook her slender body, her green-flowered shoulders shaking. “Oh, Sheriff, it’s worse than that! He was murdered.”

Murdered?

The tin cup trembled in his hand. John sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. An ache shot pain from his thigh down his gimpy leg. “Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?”

Ethan scowled, his intense eyes so like Sam’s. “Someone hit him over the head with a board in the barn. Left him for dead. When we found him, he was still breathing, but he couldn’t tell us anything. He just…” Ethan gulped, swallowed hard and blinked back his own tears, “he just grabbed my hand, then he was gone.”

Sam had been murdered? It didn’t make sense.

“Are you sure it wasn’t an accident?” John didn’t want to believe in any other possibility.

“It was no accident.” Ethan shook his head, ran distracted fingers through his dark curls until they stood on end and made him look like a wild man. His brown eyes glared at John with a tinge of madness too. He was too intent, too angry.

“Pa’s been worried about someone following him for a long time now. I tried to get him to talk to you, but he was too stubborn. Said he’d work it out himself. One night, he was sure someone was hiding in the barn when he went to do chores. A couple of times, he thought he’d been followed in town.”

“Did he go to Sheriff Crane?”

Lily shook her head, distressed. “I told him he should, but you know Pa.” As if realizing what she’d said, she corrected herself in a mournful voice, “…knew Pa. He told Ethan he’d seen a few men in town he might recognize, from the old days. Outlaws. He wasn’t quite sure. Said he wanted to make certain.”

“He mention who they might be?” John stroked his short beard, deep in thought.

“No.” Ethan said. “Just that they were men he thought he recognized. He told us to watch out, be wary. Pa worried about you too. Said he planned to talk to you as soon as we got the fields plowed.”

“You have to help us, Sheriff,” Lily wailed, gripping John’s hand in a tight-fingered clasp. “If those men killed Pa, they might try to kill you, too. Can’t you stop them somehow, before anyone else gets hurt?”

The idea of refusing Sam’s kids didn’t sit well, but he knew he must. John set the tin cup on the table and squeezed Lily’s cold, slender fingers with the other hand.

“Been a long time since I rode as a lawman,” John looked from Ethan to Lily, knowing they wouldn’t realize. No, their grief was too raw yet. They were too young to understand how sometimes a man had to back away from violence. “I’m past all that. Got a gimp leg from the last shootout me an’ your pa were involved in. I’m not a sheriff anymore. Don’t see how I can help.”

“But…” Lily’s eyes widened, shocked at his refusal, “but what if they come after you next. Pa feared it.”

John shook his head and watched the respect die from Ethan’s face, disdain shuttering his brown eyes.

Ethan interrupted, “Let’s go, Lily. Guess Pa wasn’t as much a friend as he used to say. We wondered why you didn’t show up for Pa’s funeral, guess it’s because you didn’t care.”

“It ain’t that at all,” John argued, “I never even knew he died. You should’ve sent word and I’d have come.” John reached out and grabbed the gray linen sleeve of the boy’s shirt, “Me an’ your pa was the best of friends. I cared about him like he was my brother. But I’m old. I’m tired. Me an’ Sam made plenty of enemies through the years. I can’t reopen the door to the past and walk in. If somebody comes to kill me—well, I can’t do much about that neither. Reckon I’ll face that moment when it comes. If it comes…”

“You won’t help us find who killed Pa?” Lily’s voice trembled; she gripped her handkerchief in a white-knuckled hand.

“I’m sorry. Go talk to Sheriff Crane. Or Sheriff North, he’s probably the closest law to your ranch. If someone killed your pa, justice needs to be done. But, I ain’t the one to do it.”

“Come on, Lily,” Ethan grabbed for his sister and almost dragged her to the cabin door. The girl sobbed as Ethan helped her outside, into a waiting buggy.

“You all don’t need to go off mad,” John followed them out onto his small porch, “stay here tonight an’ we can talk about it in the morning.”

“We’re done talking,” Ethan answered, almost shoving Lily into the buggy. He snapped up the reins and urged the horse across the barnyard.

In the west, the sun had begun its downward journey. Pale shoots of pink and orange slashed across the blue of the sky. The hens squawked, pecking at bugs in the dirt around the cabin. John stood, one hand on a porch railing, staring until Sam Garrett’s buggy was just a bug-sized speck in the distance.

Sam. He and his deputy had spent years together, tracking outlaws, talking beside campfires, laughing over pranks they’d pulled on one another. Hard to believe Sam was dead.

Gone.

What would Sam want him to do now? John thought about the level-headed man he’d known. If Sam’s death was murder, then justice should be done. But not by me. I’m tired. I’m old; too weary to fight anyone.

The idea someone might be after him didn’t worry John as much as the safety of Sam’s kids. Maybe I should talk to the sheriff myself.

Bossie bellowed from the barnyard. Time to milk, settle the animals for the night. John headed toward the barn, gritting his teeth at the pain in his leg. After he tended to evening chores, he would rest in the rocking chair, with his leg close to the fire.

Time enough tomorrow to figure out how to help Sam’s kids. A tear slid down his weathered face. Sam’s dead. He simply couldn’t believe his best friend was gone. If somebody killed him, they sure oughta pay, and the law should see justice done.

I spent my years as a sheriff. Let someone else take over the job. Won’t be me. Sorry, Sam, it can’t be me.

Chapter One

Pecos, Texas

Next Day

Money sure goes.

Annabelle Hollis sighed as she glanced down at the wooden box holding the supplies on her grocery list. Behind the counter of the Dawson Mercantile, Clara Dawson chattered on in the sing-song voice most of her customers had learned to ignore. If there was one thing Clara loved more than totting up sales, it was gossip.

“I’m sorry, Clara, what were you saying? You better give me a ten pound sack of flour too. I want to bake some extra bread this week.”

“Got company coming?” Clara asked, her blue eyes wide with interest. “Hank didn’t mention anything to me.”

Clara’s husband, Hank, had been helping at Annabelle’s ranch since the death of her husband, Thomas.

Shaking her head, Annabelle let her long, auburn braid flip over the shoulder of a blue-and-white-striped blouse. “No, I’m baking extra for that family a few ranches over. They just had a new baby. Figured I’ve got more time than they do.”

“You don’t say.” Clara plucked a sack of flour off the shelf and set it down on the counter. “Now, what was I saying…”

No telling.

“I know!” Clara snapped her pudgy fingers and rearranged the crate’s groceries to add in a small sack of tea. “That hideous fabric, Miz Montgomery bought. So red I’m sure it could start a bullfight.”

Despite herself, Annabelle snickered, imagining the thin, squinty-eyed old maid staring down a bull. Maybe waving a cape in her blue-veined hands, hollering in her squeaky voice, “Tora, Tora, Tora.”

“I know!” Clara agreed, mistaking Annabelle’s humor for agreement. “I told her how awful it looked but she bought it anyway.” Tsking, Clara gave a good-natured shrug and added up Annabelle’s order. “This all you need? If you forget something, I can have Hank bring it out to the ranch tomorrow. We’ve got to take care of our best friend.”

Distracted by Clara’s change of subject, Annabelle blinked. Tears dampened her eyes when she thought of all Clara and Hank had done for her since her Thomas’s death. “You and Hank,” the words sounded thick to her own ears, but Annabelle felt honor bound to express her gratitude again. “I don’t know what I’d have done without the two of you. Ever since Thomas’s fall, well, Hank’s been the best ranch hand I’ve ever had, and he’s like a doting uncle. And you…”

A tear slid down her cheek. Embarrassed, Annabelle brushed it away impatiently, “what would I have done without you? You’ve been the best friend I’ve ever had. Almost like the mama I lost when I was little.”

“Now, you shush that kind of talk. We’re glad to help, you know that.” Clara flushed, the strands from her messy gray chignon drifting around her chubby, apple cheeks. This morning, the small, birdlike woman wore a soft green dress in an expensive cotton with delicate lace at the collar and cuffs. It often amused Annabelle that Clara could dress so fashionably, and be such an impeccable storekeeper, but be so untidy at the same time.

Annabelle felt downright dowdy in her blue-and-white-striped blouse, well-worn brown riding skirt, and runover boots. Until she looked at Clara a bit closer.

Hairpins settled at half-mast in her hair, a splotch of butter smeared her bodice, and Annabelle pretended not to notice the dusting of toast crumbs on her ample chin. While Clara often went through life at full gallop, only her body showed the fact.

The large mercantile store was neat, tidy as a pin, and swept within an inch of its life. Clara saw to it that the wooden floors were freshly mopped each night by her thirteen-year-old son, Herbert. “I honestly don’t know how you do it Clara. You make everything look so easy. My life has always felt so…difficult…especially since Thomas died.”

Clara reached across the counter and clasped Annabelle’s hand in her own. Squeezing tight, she spoke words of comfort. “It just feels hard right now because you’re trying to do too much alone. You let Hank help more and I’ll send Herbert out to help too. A woman can try to run a ranch alone, but you need a man.”

“Oh, I know, and Hank has been a blessing. It’s just, maybe I can’t help thinking how happy Thomas and I were. It doesn’t seem…fair, I guess, that he died in such a stupid way. Falling off a ladder. Who falls off a ladder and dies? Thomas was so careful. It makes no sense.”

Clara’s blue eyes turned wary. “Hank and I were talking… it never made sense to us either. Hank thought…well,” she took a deep breath and plunged on, “he thought things looked kind of funny, that maybe Thomas…” Clara stopped, for once looking at a loss for words.

“Maybe Thomas what?”

Annabelle didn’t get to hear what Clara suspected. The little bell over the mercantile door tinkled as someone else entered the store. Right away, Clara shook her head and slid behind the counter, straightening her white apron, dotted with jam specks, across her slender middle. “Good afternoon, Mr. Glover,” she said in a voice neither welcoming nor I’d-rather-not-speak-to-you. Not to one of the richest men in town. Clara depended on his business; she’d told Annabelle too many times to count.

“But I wish there was somewhere else he could shop,” she’d often whispered. “Mr. Glover makes my skin crawl.”

I know how she feels. From force of habit, Annabelle reached to touch the Colt revolver in the holster around her waist.

Isaac Glover stepped up to the counter, smelling of bay rum and the expensive cigar burning between two of his fingers. He wore a dark, broadcloth suit, pressed white, linen shirt with a black string tie, and his leather skin boots gleamed with polish. Annabelle could see her wobbly face in the tips. If a man could give off the scent of wealth, Mr. Glover had that air about him. Like he walked on streets of gold.

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Dawson, and to you, Mrs. Hollis. How are things out at your ranch?”

“Just fine, thank you.” Annabelle coughed as the cigar smoke drifted past her nose.

Not that it’s any of your concern.

“Hmm, well, that’s good, very good, but you know anytime it gets to be too much for you,” his piercing blue–black eyes pinned her with an intense glance, “a widowed woman like yourself, I’d be glad to take it off your hands at a reasonable price. You know I’m always scouting land for the railroad. You could settle somewhere in town.”

As always at the suggestion, Annabelle stiffened her back, kept a tight smile on her face, and answered as politely as Mama had taught her. Even if she did want to spit in his face and stomp the shine off his boots. “No, thank you, Mr. Glover. Thomas and I bought the ranch, and I intend to stay there and run it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have chores to do at home. Clara, have a pleasant day.”

“You too, Annabelle.”

“Well, well,” Mr. Glover chuckled in his slimy snake voice, as Annabelle turned, “Aren’t you the feisty one, Mrs. Hollis? One day, you may wish you’d sold the land to me.”

Is that a threat?

“Over my dead body!” she snapped, grabbed up the sack of flour and stormed out the door.

Chapter Two

Early the next morning, John finished his chores in record time, saddled up Ranger, and headed into Pecos River. He needed more coffee, and a hunk of Clara Dawson’s cheese would go right nice for supper. Not that he couldn’t do without both things, but after Ethan and Lily’s visit, he’d spent a restless night, unable to sleep. Frustrated about not being able to help them, he decided a ride might do him some good and take his mind off things. While he was in town, he could stop off at the sheriff’s office and see if Crane had any ideas about Sam’s death. Maybe it was an accident, and the kids didn’t want to accept it. Or it might be possible that things were more sinister than they seemed.

Once in town, John rode easily down the hard-packed dirt path they called a street. The town had grown in the few years since he’d settled here, although it had been around for quite a spell. He knew people traveling on wagon trains using the Butternut and Chisholm Trails had passed through, crossing the nearby Pecos River.

Located as it was near the river, the town sat squat on the high prairie at the northern border of the Chihuahuan Desert. It was a good 210 miles to the big city of El Paso. John knew the distance well from his years as sheriff. He ought to, he’d ridden it often enough with Sam by his side.

As he rode along, nodding to friends and neighbors, John looked around at the wooden buildings, tall with false fronts. He noticed a new section of the boardwalk in front of the stores; the ladies must appreciate that refinement. At the far end of town, he saw a corral holding a teeming, bawling herd of cattle, probably getting ready to head across the Pecos River for sale. The dust and stench filled the air with the town’s normal perfume of cow manure, sweat and rawhide.

At the corner of Main and Side Alley, John reined in Ranger, slid easily out of the saddle, and tied the stallion to a hitching post. A buggy with a swaybacked old mare stood in front of Dawson’s Mercantile. Clara ran the store while her husband, Hank, worked as a ranch hand and managed a small herd of Guernsey cattle.

The store’s windows gleamed from elbow grease and vinegar, sparkling in the first rays of the morning sun. John stopped to admire the wares inside as he pulled off his wide-brimmed hat and brushed the trail dust from his long, linen duster.

The front porch on the outside of the store showed shiny tin buckets, a stand of new brooms and shovels, bins of early potatoes, and barrels of staples like beans and cornmeal. A clear-throated canary warbled from a wire cage hanging from the rafters. A pleasant aroma of freshly baked bread drifted through the air from Millie’s Café and John’s stomach rumbled. It wasn’t often he had fresh-baked bread.

John stepped up the two stairs, headed toward the door, and reached out to open it.

The door burst open, and only his quick jump back kept him from being knocked on the head.

A woman barreled out, sidestepped him, and then managed to bump straight into his side. A linen sack in her arm burst open and flour drifted out in an exploding white cloud. It coated them both as the woman stopped, turned, and glowered at him. The angry expression in her eyes was dimmed a tad by the rim of flour coating her eyes like a sideshow clown.

“Why don’t you watch where you’re going?” John snapped in a sour mood. He brushed down the linen duster, getting flour all over his fingers. Probably all in his beard too.

“Me?” Outraged, the woman glared, green eyes shooting off sparks. “Why were you standing in the way?”

“Standing in the way?” He brushed his beard, the sifted flour falling like snow. A glance at his once clean brown shirt and trousers made him crimp his lips to keep from cursing. He took a deep breath. “You’re the one who came barreling out like a bullet out of a pistol and socked me with your flour.”

“Well, I’m sorry; maybe I was distracted,” she snapped. “But you could have watched where you were going.”

A growl erupted low in his throat as he stomped his boots, a drift of flour shifting around his feet. “How’m I supposed to get this stuff off?”

“I said I was sorry,” she brushed at the flour on her own face. She crimped her lips, then muttered, “Seems to me you came running up here too fast, without looking where you were going either. It’s not all my fault.”

Darn, fool woman!

“I was minding my own business when you shoved open the door and hit me with your sack,” John argued back, shaking his duster, and hitting his trousers with the hat. A cloud of flour wafted out.

“Hit you? Why you…you…” the woman couldn’t seem to get the words out. Red splotched her cheeks, and she grabbed the brown riding skirt and stomped past him.